


Rapprochement

by severinne



Series: The Wind and Its Satellite [16]
Category: Star Trek (AOS)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Multi, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-09
Updated: 2013-06-09
Packaged: 2017-12-14 11:29:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/836403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/severinne/pseuds/severinne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pike and Kirk take the reconciliation of their differences into their own hands, but McCoy can’t help but think their solution is too good to be true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The twelfth part of The Wind and its Satellite, and the one that brings in the long-awaited Pike/Kirk/McCoy threesome in the explicit, pornographic sense. Not it didn’t take four years and a whole lot of talking to get there.
> 
> Being part of a series dating back to when Star Trek XI was still in theatres, this story has no spoilers whatsoever for Star Trek: Into Darkness. However, I can’t be held responsible for what might happen in comments.

'Chris.'

The sound of name was so soft he never would have noticed if it had been spoken by anything but that low southern cadence that had etched a permanent home for itself in his subconscious. Pike's eyes snapped upward, widening as he spotted McCoy nudging his way through the throng of senior officers and their far more numerous aides. With a cautious glance back at Boyce, he jerked his head to beckon McCoy after him into the furthest corner of the antechamber.

'How did you get in here?' He drew McCoy closer by his arm, holding him low enough to go unseen by most of the room.

'No idea,' he shrugged. 'And I can't stay long, I should be out there in my seat by now, but I had to see you first.'

'You better make it quick,' he muttered, casting a sour glance back at Boyce, who watched them with that peculiar mix of amusement and annoyance that the older man must have mastered a lifetime ago. McCoy followed his gaze with a questioning frown.

'What's going on?'

‘They’re trying to put me in the damn chair,' he snapped impatiently. That should have been explanation enough but his irritation spiked to see something more conflicted than equal outrage play out across McCoy’s expressive features.

'I see.' McCoy pressed his lips thin, a long and telling pause. 'It's a two hour ceremony,' he pointed out cautiously.

He barely repressed a flinch of bitter betrayal. 'So?'

'So your legs have only been holding out for about forty minutes of continuous standing before going into spasm,' he said plainly, with a sharp impatient edge of his own. 'I still read your physio reports, Chris. And damn it, it sure sounds like Dr. Boyce has a point.'

'Like hell he does,’ he growled, probably too hard and loud if McCoy’s deepening scowl was any indication. He rolled his eyes, and with a fleeting glance back at Boyce, pulled Pike closer with an impulsive hand on his hip.

'You proud, stubborn idiot,' he whispered harshly. 'Not two days ago you brought me to me knees and had me tied up and begging for your cock before I even knew what hit me. So what the hell have you got to prove?'

His words triggered the memory swift and searing in his mind, of his Leo so hard and desperate, gorgeous lips stretched around him... Pike fought to stifled his arousal, if only for the sake of the uniform and the occasion. ‘That’s different,’ he muttered. ‘Everyone out there…’

‘Is going to see the same damn Starfleet hero you’ve always been,’ he interrupted sharply. ‘And since when do you give a shit about what _everyone_ thinks?’

McCoy seized his hand, startling Pike out of an indignant reply with the press of something small and cold into his palm. Even in reverse, the gesture was immediately familiar, heavily charged with the suppressed horror of the last time they had done this, in a turbolift speeding him to the Narada. A sickly stab of alarm sent his gaze shooting downward, his panic easing as he saw his old Academy ring still gleaming on McCoy’s smallest finger. His curiosity triggered, he tried to open his hand to look but McCoy held his fist closed around the unseen token with both his clasping hands.

‘I had it resized for you,’ he said quietly. ‘I want you to have it.’

Pike stared, startled by the echo of something like guilt or regret lurking in his Leo’s eyes. He recoiled from it before he dared to wonder if that was the same look he had given McCoy at this same moment before. ‘Are you sure…?’

‘Just… keep it, please.’ He bowed his head, hiding from Pike’s incisive stare. ‘I’ve… done something, Chris. I didn’t mean for it to happen, and I don’t know what’s gonna come of it…’

‘What is it?’ Pike pressed a hand low on McCoy’s hip, urging him closer. ‘Leo...’

‘I can’t tell you here,’ he protested in a low hush that Pike barely heard over the clamour of too many officials so busily preparing for the circus to come. ‘I’m sorry, I wish there was more time, but… oh, damn it all to hell.’

The urgent kiss that took his mouth left Pike frozen with disbelief, too shocked to respond to McCoy’s achingly tender tongue over his lips until it was too late. McCoy pulled back as quickly as he had come on, face flushing with dawning panic at having done something so impulsive in front of so many witnesses. Casting his own measuring glance around, Pike was relieved to see none of the condemnation or chaos that should have ensued from kissing a gorgeous young cadet in a room full of Command-level officers; everyone was clearly too preoccupied to have noticed the brief transgression.

Well. Everyone except Phil, if the look of grudging admiration was anything to go by.

‘I gotta go,’ McCoy muttered hastily, squeezing Pike’s trapped hand between the shelter of their bodies. ‘We’ll talk later, I promise, just… don’t give Boyce any more self-righteous shit, okay? Go sit in that chair and let them all see how little it means to you.’

He shoved his way out the room with far less care than he had taken getting inside, probably drawing more attention than was strictly wise but buying Pike enough of a diversion to open his hand and stare bleakly at the newly minted Academy ring resting in his palm, etched with a year that was already burned into Starfleet history before it was even over.

McCoy must have used Pike’s old ring to size this one; it slid perfectly into its old place on the third finger of his right hand and held there safe and secure, as though it had always been a part of him.

A chime and the descent of sudden order over the chaos of bodies around him snapped Pike’s attention back to the present moment. Clenching his fist at his side, he turned on his heel and strode back to his waiting friend.

‘Ready now?’ Boyce asked sardonically, arms crossed and eyebrow still firmly hitched.

‘Bring the chair around,’ he said shortly, taking a moment to enjoy Phil’s visible relief before turning to the young cadet pushing the wheelchair forward. His eyes were determinedly downcast, his ears flushed bright red. ‘Is there a problem, Cadet?’

The cadet snapped to attention, visibly mortified. ‘Sir. No, sir.’

‘Stop trying to traumatize my students, Chris,’ Boyce chided sharply as Pike settled into the chair with an amused smirk. ‘They’re not all made like that young man of yours.’

‘Probably for the best.’ Pike frowned down at the ring, so bright and silent on his finger as the cadet began to roll him tentatively towards the line of senior officers waiting to enter the assembly hall.

‘I don’t know, think I’d take another half-dozen like McCoy if they all had the stones to talk you into that chair without having to break your legs first.’

‘Only a half-dozen?’ he teased lightly, glancing up at Boyce’s glowering face.

‘Okay, maybe a full dozen but no more than that, you perverted monster,’ he growled as they advanced towards the assembly hall. ‘He’s still a mouthy son of a bitch and even you couldn’t handle that many of him.’

Pike let loose a short laugh, but couldn’t disagree. Even now, he barely felt equal to the task of comprehending this vulnerable twist in McCoy’s affections, the desperation that had made him cast his usual reservations aside and risk kissing him in this crowd.

Not that he minded the gesture in the slightest. Warmth and pride flooded through his aching body as he entered the assembly hall and spotted McCoy in the third row, sharp and stunning as ever in his reds. Seeing his beautiful lover so near, feeling the echo of his kiss upon his lips made it easier to own the chair that supported him through the commencement. He held his head high through the oaths of allegiance and refused to buckle beneath the weight of endless tribute to all those dead and gone. He thumbed the edge of his ring when the sheer scale of loss threatened to overcome his defenses and let the secret of it sustain him like a talisman until the movement of his chair shook him with an involuntary start. He clenched his fingers tight around the arms of the chair, fought to master the irrational panic of being moved without so much as a word of warning.

Damn it all, but he would show Boyce’s cadet what trauma really looked like before this afternoon was done.

His breath caught in his throat again as he saw the cause of his movement away from the withdrawn row of the admiralty. Even when standing at attention before a grudgingly impressed Admiral Barnett, James Kirk positively thrummed with electric recklessness, a wildling mirror of his father who didn’t even bother to repress the smile that spread across his face as he received the Medal of Valour. His happiness was infectious, filling Pike with a rush of pride, affection, other things he had long learned to repress with every brusque ending of advisory meetings that had gone too late into the evening or too deep into a shared bottle to be entirely professional.

There was no sending Kirk away now, though, not now that he approached to relieve him of the Enterprise, not now that Boyce’s cadet was pushing him even closer.

As Kirk drew near, Pike took in the uncharacteristic stiffness in his shoulders, the shadow cooling the recklessness of those brilliant blue eyes where commendation should have made them burn brighter than ever. The smile on his full lips was not unfriendly, but perhaps conspiratorial with the memory of more recent conversations over coffee and painkillers that Pike already regretted, plucking at a possibility that might answer the question that had preoccupied him since that ring had found its way into the palm of his hand.

He shot the briefest glance at McCoy in the gallery before his chair came to a halt, reading his military stillness and downcast eyes with an inward sigh before turning his attention back to the brilliant young man waiting before him.

_Oh, Leo…_

‘I relieve you, sir.’

Relieved, perhaps, of more than his ship. Pike returned Kirk’s smile, and hoped the brittle anticipation at its edges didn’t show too much.

‘I am relieved.’

Bullshit.

\+ + +

The resentment clawing down Kirk’s spine as he fumed silently at this heavily burdened work desk high up in Starfleet HQ was the same sort he would have once released with a fight or a fuck.

Staring hard at Pike sitting so steady and cool across the table from him, damned if he could decide which would do the trick.

He doubted sex would help anymore, not after he’d fucked his way into this mess in the first place. And admittedly, an impulsive round of heavy groping and kissing in the captain’s chair hardly qualified as fucking, but the searing memory of it was every bit as potent as the most earth-shattering sex of his life. Even now, he was driven to distraction at the mere thought of insanely skilled fingers stroking his dick, the whimpering little moan Bones made when he came. It had all been perfect, right up until that ring caught his eye.

He had recognized it at a glance.

After three years of admiring Pike’s hands during meetings, of fantasizing about the precision and strength of those experienced fingers, _of course_ that particular Academy ring was burned into his consciousness.

Kirk stared at Pike’s hands even now. The ring he had felt in the clasp of their hands at commencement yesterday had undermined his suspicions, but those doubts were already dissolving now he could see how the ring he wore now gleamed like new on his aged finger. He took advantage of Pike’s focus on the crew manifests to lean in closer, squinting at his elegant hand at rest on the desk to examine the ring’s engravings.

If he tilted his head to the side, he could just make out the twist of the caduceus imprinted in the platinum plate. And he knew the grey that streaked itself more copiously through Pike’s brown hair was both recent and premature, but Kirk also knew full damn well that Pike had not graduated yesterday.

Biting his lip, Kirk let his gaze slip upward to Pike’s profile, his head still bowed slightly as sharp eyes flickered intelligently over the manifests. Even more than the silver in his hair, the deeper lines around his narrowed eyes and the faded colour in his lips echoed traumas that brought the raw, disproportionate fear of losing this man to Nero back to the surface of Kirk’s hammering heart.

Not that anything Pike had endured could begin to explain that ring on his finger. If Bones needed time to think, fine. He could wait on Bones. But this… _this_ couldn’t wait another moment longer.

If fucking wasn’t an option, he was more than ready to fight.

‘Looks like Bones hasn’t signed off on his assignment papers yet,’ he said slowly, eyes flicking back up to scrutinize Pike’s reaction.

‘Nothing to worry about.’ Pike’s reply was mild, attention fixed on the science crew scrolling down his screen. ‘Could be any number of reasons why it hasn’t come through yet.’

‘I sure hope so. I wouldn’t want anyone else as my CMO.’ Kirk licked his lips, counted the blinking of the other man’s eyes to five before continuing. ‘I mean, why settle for any old doctor when I could have a good fuck in my medical bay too?’

Pike didn’t exactly flinch, but a tight sort of shudder seemed to pass through him inside a heartbeat, leaving him stonily still in his chair. ‘Why indeed,’ he murmured, convincingly indifferent to anyone but Kirk.

‘Absolutely. I mean, now that I’ve had him in the captain’s chair on the Enterprise, I can tell he’d be up for anything,’ he elaborated smoothly, cocking a sharp grin for Pike’s benefit when the Admiral looked up sharply. ‘Does that surprise you?’ he asked coyly.

‘Am I surprised that you and McCoy fucked in the captain’s chair? No, not really.’ Manifests forgotten, Pike leaned back in his chair and fixed Kirk with a steely stare. ‘What does surprise me is that you’re telling me about it. Doctor McCoy is a very private man. I doubt he would appreciate you airing his personal life like this.’

The forced grin wavered and faded from Kirk’s lips, irritated to realize that Pike was right about that much at least. ‘How do you know what he would _appreciate_ , sir?’ He raised his eyebrows, as falsely incredulous as Pike was pretending to be. ‘You don’t know him that well.’

‘As you’re so clearly aware but apparently too cowardly to admit out loud, I know him very well.’ Despite his icy tone, Pike offered a challenging smirk. ‘Intimately, in fact.’

He exhaled slowly, stunned at the brazen ease of Pike’s confession. ‘How intimate?’ he asked flatly, eyes narrowed, pretense dead.

‘Very.’ Pike’s answering squint was focused, fit to kill. ‘Actually, we were intimate in that chair about three months before you got around to it.’

The remark was designed to sting, and it worked. Kirk clenched his jaw against the betrayal pounding his heart angrily in his chest. ‘You never told me you and Bones were… involved before,’ he said accusingly. The reality of it was bearing down on him too fast, too soon to put it into words he could utter out loud.

‘You never asked,’ Pike replied sharply, without remorse. ‘And with the toxins pumping through my veins at the time, it’s not like I could have lied if you had.’

‘Didn’t stop you from hiding a damn important bit of information though, did it?’ Unable to confront that hard stare a second longer, Kirk tightened his hands into fists beneath the table as he stared out the window, blinking harshly against the blinding sunlight. Mortification crawled deep beneath his anger; maybe he never would have thought to ask Pike directly but he had known there was someone else in Bones’ life before that fateful distress call, someone who had survived the destruction of Vulcan and remained close enough to be deemed ‘complicated’ by Bones’ hesitant lips before he had silenced him with that first kiss.

 _Complicated._ Bones sure had that one right. This had been fucked from the start, right from the jealous twitch that had consumed him with the realization that Bones had been seeing someone without his knowledge, someone male enough to dash away the last argument Kirk had placed between him and the very possibility of seducing Bones. The shock of that confrontation thundered through him even now, the betrayal he read in the bites and bruises torn into Bones’ back…

A hard shudder of fresh anger slammed through him, gave Kirk the strength to look back at Pike. He had been waiting impassively, so damn calm that it boiled Kirk’s blood.

‘So that was you.’

Pike raised a questioning eyebrow.

‘After my second go at the Kobayashi Maru,’ Kirk explained, barely able to speak through his clenching teeth, ‘I saw the bruises you left on Bones. What the hell did you do to him?’

A distant, heated look passed through Pike’s cool eyes. ‘Before your second attempt…?’ he mused, brow furrowing before he smiled softly as though at a fond memory. ‘We were at my apartment,’ he recalled. ‘He let himself in and practically dragged me into the bedroom. Definitely in one of his more demanding moods,’ he added wryly, even as his gravelly voice grew thicker with a shadow of arousal. ‘Tearing off my uniform faster than I could undress, growling and rubbing up against me… his mouth,’ Pike’s fingers, that ring, flickered up to his neck, lightly touching the skin above his collar, ‘left a mark here, where I couldn’t hide it. Took days to fade away…’

Pike snatched his hand away from his throat, giving his head a quick shake as the hint of a flush coloured that place on his neck and crept tellingly further up. A sympathetic heat was rushing beneath Kirk’s uniform; for all the personal conversations they had shared over the past three years, he had never heard anything so sexual come out of Pike’s mouth before, leaving him unprepared for the raw eroticism that his voice so effortlessly poured into every word. Kirk clawed his fingers hard into his thigh under the table, dashed his tongue quick over his lips.

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ Kirk said tightly. Pike’s pale blue eyes flashed back up at him, hard and measuring before dropping his chin in the slightest hint of a nod.

‘I forced him facedown on the bed,’ he said plainly, ‘tied his hands to the headboard and hit him with my belt until he begged me to fuck him through the mattress.’

Kirk sucked in a sharp breath, something both hot and cold driving hard down his spine. Perversely, his unhelpful erection hadn’t dulled in the slightest at Pike’s words, at the images now throbbing through his mind. Even more than the faded bruises, he remembered the imprint of teeth standing out raw on Bones’ skin; his blood raced after the scene that flooded his mind, of Pike’s lean body fucking hard into Bones beneath him, the primitive claim of his bite into a tanned, broad shoulder, maybe at the moment of orgasm...

He squeezed his eyes shut, summoned up the only defense he had left.

‘Not much competition then, is it?’ He shot a vicious glare back at Pike, forced his sharpest smirk onto his lips as Pike squinted askance. ‘I mean, if Bones has the choice of me and an abusive sadist…’

‘It’s always been Leo’s choice,’ Pike snapped coldly. ‘ _Always_. And if you want to better understand McCoy, I think we’ve had enough of doing this without him here to speak for himself.’

His gaze still held Kirk’s, dangerous with barely repressed rage as his hand flew to the side and stabbed a comm frequency into his desktop console.

_’McCoy here.’_

Kirk opened his mouth, snapped it shut at Pike’s quelling glare.

‘It’s me,’ Pike said, the warmth in his voice contrary to everything in his demeanour only seconds ago. ‘Am I interrupting anything?’

 _’Nope, I’m all done with debriefings for today.’_ Bones’ drawl was relaxed, almost lazy. _’Anything I can help you with, sir?’_

A shock of arousal chilled Kirk’s flesh beneath his uniform. The words were professional enough, but the way Bones inflected the question was anything but: low and sultry, nothing like his typically dour best friend.

‘I need to see you,’ Pike replied, easily matching the intimacy of Bones’ voice. ‘How soon can you get to the apartment? The old place, I mean,’ he added swiftly, staring intently at the comm panel. Everything in his stillness seemed to anticipate the long pause that followed before Bones spoke again.

 _‘You sure that’s a good idea?’_ he asked finally. Hesitation, and even hope, echoed off every syllable. Kirk frowned, watching Pike carefully as his tired features flickered past a wistful smile.

‘More sure than I’ve been for a long time,’ he sighed. ‘Please, Leo…’

Fascinated as he was, Kirk had to look away, his gaze slipping sideways to the silver shapes of training shuttles sky-dancing far across the bay. Even with the distance of the communicator, watching Pike speak to Bones like this felt as uncomfortably voyeuristic as the shock of seeing Spock and Uhura say their goodbyes on the transporter pad.

 _‘Of course,’_ Bones replied finally, with a warmth that made Pike visibly relax as Kirk’s eyes flicked irresistibly back to his face. _‘I can be there in… is twenty minutes alright?’_

‘It’s perfect. Thank you,’ he added softly.

 _‘As if I could refuse you anything,’_ Bones said fondly, so damn playful that it lanced a fresh burst of jealousy through Kirk’s chest. _‘McCoy out.’_

Pike let the vacant comm line bleed white noise into the silence before slapping the controls off, then closed his eyes a moment before they shot open to fix Kirk with a hard stare. ‘You still think I’m some sort of abusive asshole, Kirk?’

Startled by the question, still preoccupied with the echo of Bones’ honeyed drawl in his ear, Kirk straightened upright in his seat. ‘I wouldn’t presume to guess based on one conversation, sir,’ he replied carefully, eyes narrowed.

‘Then I won’t make you guess.’ Pike stood up abruptly, cast a swift eye over the desk that reduced all their work to insignificance. ‘Get up.’

Kirk stood warily, fists clenched at his sides. Regardless of his first impulse to go this route, he was reluctant to get into a fistfight with a commanding officer and one who was still in physiotherapy, but he had taken enough combat lessons with Pike to know better than to underestimate his cold efficiency in a fight. He kept an attentive eye on the Admiral as he hefted his new cane like a weapon rather than a crutch, alert to the sideways flash of his hand towards his console again.

‘This is Admiral Pike requesting transport to primary residential, plus guest.’

‘Acknowledged.’ A bland voice crackled from the comm, a pause for distant beeps. ‘I’ve got a lock, please stand by.’

Confused and increasingly frustrated, Kirk opened his mouth, a scant second before his mouth and the rest of him dematerialized.

The very molecules of his anger coalesced along with the rest of him in the blink of an eye. The meeting room at HQ was gone, replaced by a sprawling apartment with pale wood floors that gleamed in the sunlight pouring through a wall of windows staring high above the bay. A rapid sweep of his surroundings revealed luxurious leather furniture, a gleaming open kitchen, a deep-woven rug laid before a sleek plasma fireplace.

‘What the hell…?’ Kirk glared at Pike, trying not to drop too obviously into combat stance.

‘Special dispensation.’ Heedless of Kirk’s wariness, Pike brushed past him towards a low sideboard tucked into a nearby alcove. ‘For Admirals, or for designated invalids, who knows. No one in Starfleet has had the nerve to tell me one way or the other.’ He glanced back over his shoulder, holding up a bottle of Saurian brandy. ‘Drink?’

Kirk curled his lip. ‘Got any beer?’ he asked mulishly.

‘In the fridge.’

Shoulders still tensed, Kirk circled the kitchen island and opened the refrigerator, finding expensive cheeses and fresh vegetables alongside tall bottles of pale Mexican lager. He took one, twisted its cap off with the calloused palm of his hand.

‘There’s limes in there too,’ Pike said neutrally.

‘That’s nice.’ He kicked the fridge closed.

‘Want a glass?’

Kirk pulled a long swig from the bottle.

‘Fine.’ Pike set aside his poured snifter of brandy and selected a second bottle: a Kentucky bourbon that Kirk recalled hearing Bones wax poetic about on more than one occasion. ‘Look, I get that you have every right being pissed off at me,’ he said levelly, inspecting a heavy old-fashioned glass in the sunlight flooding through the window before pouring out a generous measure of the bourbon. ‘You shared something very personal with me out of trust and under different circumstances I hope I would have been a lot more honest with you in return.’

‘Under different circumstances.’ Kirk repeated the platitude deliberately slow, unimpressed. He watched with a narrowed eye as Pike carried his drink and the bourbon to the apartment’s central grouping of sofa and chairs.

‘Under circumstances that don’t involve recovery from torture and invasive, career-ending surgery.’ Pike set down both drinks on the coffee table and sank into an armchair with a visible wince that forced Kirk to stifle an unwelcome twinge of sympathy as he shuffled nearer and settled onto the facing chair, beer bottle clasped between his knees.

‘Your career isn’t over,’ he said cautiously. ‘Your promotion…’

‘I didn’t ask for it,’ Pike snapped, harsh and bitter. He reached swiftly for his brandy, took a deep swallow before speaking again, somewhat more level and calm. ‘I waited a long time to command the Enterprise on her maiden voyage. Believe me, a _promotion_ to a desk job was the last thing I wanted.’

Not for the first time, guilt stabbed sharp through Kirk’s insides to see the cost of his success written so plain in the tight clenching of Pike’s jaw, in the frustrations clawing beneath the surface of averted eyes. ‘I’m sorry,’ he blurted out impulsively, but Pike was already waving him off with a dismissive hand and tired sigh.

‘I can’t fault you for taking on my command,’ he said. ‘No more than I can blame you for finding a place in Leo’s heart.’ With great deliberation, Pike leaned forward and set his brandy down on the table again. ‘Especially after the mistakes I made… the hurt I caused him,’ he continued slowly, hands set precisely on his knees, ‘Once I realized what I had lost, I… was angry, frustrated. Then again, after giving up the codes that nearly destroyed Earth, losing Leo and the Enterprise seemed the least that I deserved...’

‘Sir…’ But Pike cut him off again with an impatient glare.

‘That last issue is between me and my ‘Fleet-appointed therapist now, Kirk,’ he said firmly. ‘You’ll just have to believe me when I say it’s getting better.’

Kirk snapped his mouth shut, nodded stiffly in agreement.

‘Anyway... I couldn’t imagine Leo wanting anything to do with me after that,’ he continued, the brief flash of temper already deflated. ‘Happiness, peace, the strength he needs from a lover… I didn’t think I had any of that left to give.’ With a sigh, Pike leaned back in his chair. ‘I thought I’d as good as lost him by the time you came around with all your talk of how much you wanted Leo. If you had told me at any other time I’d likely have given you entirely different advice. But with my injuries, the arguments, the way Leo… and well, look at you. Young, driven, gorgeous, and I can see that you care about him, maybe as much as I do…’

An unexpected jolt of pleasure shot through Kirk’s aching chest at the passing compliment, somehow even more precious for having been given so casually. ‘That wasn’t the only reason I visited you,’ he admitted hesitantly, holding his breath as Pike’s eyes widened fractionally with what might have been too-quick comprehension of his conflicted motives then, his latent hope even now.

‘I know,’ he acknowledged softly, holding his gaze meaningfully before looking away with a sigh. ‘Still, the timing wasn’t good. Leo and I had… well, a bit of a disagreement not long before that distress call came from Vulcan.’

‘Really.’ Kirk took a swig of his beer to repress an unexpected and utterly unhelpful flash of spite; judging by the arched eyebrow Pike aimed at him, it didn’t work.

‘Before you get too smug there,’ he bit out sharply, ‘you may want to take a moment to actually _think_ about what Leo is like. Though if you can honestly tell me you’ve gone three years without setting off that short fuse of his even once…’ Pike waved an expansively sardonic hand, but Kirk slumped back in his seat with a grudging nod.

‘Fine,’ he admitted. ‘What was this _disagreement_ about then?’

Pike reached for his brandy again. ‘You.’

‘What?’

‘More or less.’ He took a small, measured sip of his drink. ‘It was about us, really, but you were the catalyst. Damned if I ever found out what set him off. By the time we finally found time to talk about it like adults, you were dragging him off to help you cheat the Kobayashi Maru…’

‘Bones didn’t know anything about that,’ he interrupted swiftly. ‘I wanted him there, but he didn’t know about what I did to the program, I swear…’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ Pike said with another wave of his hand. ‘And this isn’t about the damned Maru anyway. You could’ve wanted handholding for your annual hypos and he would’ve come running at the snap of your fingers. _That’s_ what it was about. Well…’ Pressing his lips tight, Pike leaned forward and set his drink down on the coffee table. ‘That was part of it anyway. My part more than his.’

‘This sounds messy.’

‘It has been, yes.’ Pike stayed hunched forward, frowning down at his hands clasped between his knees. ‘I probably shouldn’t have asked him to talk about you while I was jerking him off,’ he murmured.

Kirk nearly choked on his beer. ‘You _what_?’

‘I didn’t even mean much of anything by it at the time,’ he continued, introspective and heedless of Kirk’s stunned sputtering. ‘And it’s not like Leo wasn’t into it… hell, the things he said about you kept me hot for days afterwards but his reaction afterwards, he must have thought...’

‘Thought what?’ he asked anxiously. Far better to push forward with the question than linger over the reel of images flickering at the edge of his imagination: of Pike’s fingers stroking Bones’ cock, or the even more tempting thought of Bones talking about him in that rough, sexy voice of his.

‘Thought I wanted you instead of him.’

A complication of reactions slammed into Kirk’s gut at his quiet words – he couldn’t stifle or ignore the satisfied flush of flattery that curled through him before his indignation on Bones’ behalf reared up from someplace deeper still. ‘And do you?’

Pike tilted his head, staring into him with an intensity that made Kirk squirm slightly in his seat. As much as he had a habit of undressing people with his eyes, Kirk had very seldom been on the receiving end of such a stare and found himself unprepared for the vulnerable edge of arousal that came from such scrutiny. He licked self-consciously at his lips, waiting breathlessly for Pike’s answer.

‘Of course not,’ he said softly.

Kirk ducked his head, swallowing tightly around the uncomfortable shape of disappointment in his throat.

‘I would never betray his trust like that,’ he continued, his rough voice thick with conviction. ‘What you need to understand is that Leo’s last relationship ended for good when his wife went off with another man, and that left its scars. It doesn’t matter if I know my attraction to you doesn’t diminish what I feel for him in the slightest… and yes, James,’ he added, smiling sadly when he looked up sharply, ‘I find you very attractive. And I know Leo feels the same, even if he hasn’t been ready to admit it out loud. Especially after Jocelyn…’ A bitter frown pulled at his lips, a passing shadow darkening his eyes. ‘Well, like I said. He’s already been betrayed badly once, and I won’t be the one to do that to him again.’

Beneath the fading electric charge building between them, another realization was creeping into the space torn open by Pike’s tender yet fiercely protective tone. ‘You’re still together,’ Kirk said flatly, eyes narrowed. ‘Even now…’

For the first time, something like uncertainty crossed Pike’s stern features. His thumb edged a seam in his chair’s leather arm, deep creases furrowing his brow before a reluctant smile twitched the corner of his mouth, triggered perhaps by the prize gleaming on his finger. ‘I think we might be, yes.’

‘You _think_ you might be?’ The beer bottle squelched wetly between his clenching fingers. ‘When was the last time you fucked?’

Pike threw him a sharp look. ‘If that’s the measure you prefer… three days ago.’

‘Three days…?’ Sickness simmered in his gut; Pike’s eyes widened in recognition.

‘Before, or after?’

‘I… don’t know.’ He bit his lip, stunned at the implication. ‘Same here.’

The arch of Pike’s eyebrow was less perturbed, more impressed. ‘I think that’s probably Leo’s most attractive quality,’ he murmured, more to himself. ‘He can be so exquisitely impulsive…’

‘Are you joking?’ Kirk shook his head, barely repressing a bitter laugh. ‘It wouldn’t have happened at all if you hadn’t fucked my best friend behind my back then encouraged me to go after him without even telling me about it.’

‘I do regret misleading you,’ Pike said firmly, fervently, ‘more than you’ll ever know. But I won’t apologize for taking Leo to my bed in the first place. Especially when you managed to share a room with him for three years without having made a single pass... at least, none that I heard about,’ he allowed with a speculative tilt of his head. ‘Did you ever...?’

Kirk scowled. ‘No,’ he admitted grudgingly. The beer was far too necessary now to not drain it dry; he exhaled harshly as the last drops slaked the old hunger at the back of his throat and kept staring at the ceiling as he fought to gather his thoughts. ‘You know why I kept my distance,’ he said tersely.

‘I do,’ Pike acknowledged gently, not without a hint of sympathy. ‘And I know why you decided you couldn’t do that anymore. But I need to know what your intentions are towards Leo after all this, before he walks through that door.’

Jim sagged back into his chair with a conflicted frown. ‘After all this?’ he echoed.

‘After changing your mind about Leo once already,’ he clarified, something fierce clipping the edge of his words. ‘I can take your anger, and no doubt I deserve it. So deal with me however you like but you’ve still got Leo to consider. I can only imagine what it must have cost him to let you in this far, and I need to know if you’re planning to throw that back in his face now that you know what you know about us.’

‘That wasn’t the plan,’ he protested defensively.

‘Did you even have a plan?’

‘Not exactly,’ he admitted. ‘Not unless you were going to just…’ There were no words to describe the hopeless hope that Pike was already dismissing with a weary shake of his head.

‘Not unless that’s what Leo wants,’ Pike said firmly. ‘I won’t abandon him unless he chooses to end it.’

The conviction in Pike’s voice was unmistakable, even if it left Kirk staring into the dregs of his beer with no greater clarity than before. ‘But if he accepts his place on the Enterprise,’ he said slowly, ‘wouldn’t that end it too…?’

‘Not necessarily.’ A flint-spark of defiance sharpened Pike’s reply. ‘There’s no shortage of couples in Starfleet who make their relationships work across light years. It’s not easy,’ he acknowledged with a low sigh, ‘but it’s more honest than pretending a change of assignments changes how we feel for each other. Not to mention, a lot easier for Leo to bear if he didn’t have to go into space on his own.’

‘What do you mean?’ He dared to look up, nerves bristling at the impatience written plain in Pike’s furrowed brow.

‘To think you could go so far outside the box on the Kobayashi Maru and not consider...’ Pike leaned forward again, something of the mentor returning to his bearing. ‘If Leo cares about us both as much as I think he does, would you really want to force him to choose? Or can you see another, easier decision he could make, if we offer it to him?’

The lesson was no longer necessary; Kirk figured it out with a thunderclap of aroused shock that knocked the breath from his lungs. ‘He wouldn’t see it as easy,’ he pointed out cautiously, no matter how wild the hope growing in his chest. ‘He’s not like that… he’s… ’

‘He’s what?’

‘You know…’ He jerked his head at the untouched bourbon waiting between them, harsh liquid velvet nearly hidden in the depths of a hard crystal shell. ‘Old fashioned?’

As Kirk predicted, Pike smirked at his feeble explanation. ‘You clearly haven’t spent nearly enough quality time with our Leo.’

‘Ours, now, is he?’ Despite his best effort to cast some skepticism into the question, a leaping sense of satisfaction was already filling Kirk’s chest at the sound of it.

‘We’ve already been sharing a lover,’ Pike pointed out, a fact stated in an intimate murmur that sent the racing blood in Kirk’s veins flooding swiftly downward. ‘So yes, James, he’s ours. If he still wants to be.’

 _Ours_. The possibility hovered between them, too heavy with significance to make the erection straining his pants feel anything but inappropriate. Kirk anxiously wet his lips, struggling to keep his mind fixed upon the present and not the white-hot possibilities stretching expansively before him. ‘And how do we convince him?’

Pike’s eyes widened, but the surprise at his eagerness faded quickly with a wistful smile. ‘I don’t think we can,’ he murmured, much to Kirk’s dismay. ‘Trust me, Leo isn’t a strategic problem you can solve. We need to be honest about this and…’

His words trailed off, his shoulders straightening as his eyes shot to the apartment’s door. Confused, Kirk glanced back and heard it too, the faint beeps and electronic hush of the door’s security lock being disabled from outside.

‘And what?’ he asked with suddenly numb lips. He was frozen in his chair, limbs tensed and heart pounding hard enough to break through his sternum. Pike cast a sympathetic, strangely encouraging glance his way as he rose slowly to his feet and briskly smoothed the creases from his uniform just as Kirk heard the door hiss open.

There was no time for him to answer, but the _buckle up and hold on tight, son_ was more than implied by that last, lingering look.

\+ + +

McCoy took all of three wary steps into Pike’s apartment before he realized that the moment of reckoning that he had been dreading and avoiding for days had already beaten him there.

None of the steadying breaths he had drawn while fussing vainly over his new uniform and rehearsing feeble explanations in anxious mutters under his breath could have prepared him for the cold shock of recognition that shivered through his bloodstream as he spotted the second man seated in one of Pike’s wingback chairs. He knew every errant feather of that regulation haircut too well; his heart raced at the slouch of those shoulders before they rolled with the sidelong glance of breathtakingly blue eyes.

‘Jim...’

His full lips twitched into something like a smile but nowhere near close enough to still the warning knife twisting into his belly. He looked shamefully away, staring imploringly at his Chris as he moved towards him on stiffly careful legs. The stubborn bastard wasn’t using his cane again, and the sight of it pierced him through with worry deeper than the shame holding McCoy back; he rushed ahead to stop him short but it was Pike who took his hand as he staggered to an uncertain stop and urged him closer.

‘It’s alright, Leo,’ he murmured as he guided him towards the seating area. There was a generously filled glass of bourbon waiting on the coffee table that Pike pressed into his numb hand. ‘There’s nothing to worry about… just have a seat, okay?’

Even that simple request felt like a test. McCoy stared despairingly at the available options before dropping into the dead centre of the unoccupied sofa, holding his breath until Pike took another armchair that placed them all at roughly equal distance.

‘So,’ he said stiffly, trying to break the tension as best he could. ‘You know.’ He didn’t dare go any further than that, speaking to his bourbon rather than either man in particular.

Unsurprisingly, Jim spoke first. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed, his voice an uncharacteristic hush. ‘Well, I guessed. He confirmed it.’

‘The ring, right?’ McCoy glanced up long enough to see Jim’s stiff nod, then sighed as he set his drink aside and twisted Pike’s ring on his smallest finger, a weeks-old nervous tic that already felt like a lifelong habit. ‘I’m so sorry, Jim,’ he murmured, too ashamed to meet Jim’s eye. ‘Heavens know you asked enough times, I should’ve just told you…’

‘Why didn’t you?’

He blew out a weary exhale, shook his head at his own hopeless stupidity. ‘All sorts of dumb reasons,’ he muttered scornfully. ‘At first, it was just keeping it secret from Starfleet, especially… well.’ McCoy glanced guiltily at Pike, who was listening patiently with a neutral expression that no doubt hid something a lot more turbulent. ‘Early on, there wasn’t much to tell that could be shared in polite company… it wasn’t exactly the sort of relationship you write home to your mama about.’ Unbelievably, Pike grinned fondly at that, easing some of the tension clenched in his chest. ‘By the time it became more than that, I was so used to keeping it quiet I couldn’t imagine doing it any different. And the Academy still would’ve condemned the hell out of us…’

‘But I wouldn’t have told anyone,’ Jim protested. ‘Didn’t you trust me to keep it secret if you asked me to?’

‘I… Jim, I had no idea how you would react,’ he admitted, wincing at the unmistakable hurt in his voice. ‘Maybe if it had been anyone but Chris… hell, I’ve seen you flirt with him,’ he added indignantly, ‘and don’t think I didn’t want to punch you in the goddamn mouth every time.’

An embarrassed flush was climbing Jim’s neck above his high uniform collar. ‘If I had _known_ …’

‘What, you would’ve stopped?’ McCoy snorted. ‘Hardly. You don’t know how to turn that shit off.’ His frown deepened along with his confusion. ‘Is that why you’re here?’ he asked bluntly. ‘You finally got around to me after three years of being an insufferable prick tease, is it Chris’ turn now?’

It was a childish, stupid accusation to make, one that came from a haunting uneasiness rather than anything like conviction. But Jim didn’t lash back the way he deserved, only glanced to Pike instead with an unreadable look that dropped like a lead weight in McCoy’s gut.

‘You can’t be serious,’ he snarled, anger already rising up to protect his heart against a sickening surge of betrayal. ‘Damn it, Chris, you could’ve damn well stopped me before I made an ass of myself yesterday in front of all of Starfleet fucking Command if _this_ was–‘

‘ _This_ isn’t what you think it is, Leo.’ Pike’s voice sliced mercilessly across his own, cutting off his anger at the knees. ‘And I’m not the one who fucked Kirk already so you can drop that shit right now.’

McCoy recoiled as though slapped, chastened and mortified as he deflated into himself. His hands twitched and clenched between his knees as he stared moodily at the untouched bourbon on the table; after a short-lived resistance he snatched it back into hand and took a bracing swallow that did nothing to douse his guilt. ‘I know,’ he murmured miserably as he lowered his glass. ‘I tried to tell you yesterday, but… Chris, I’m so sorry, I…’

‘I’m not looking for an apology.’ This interruption was kinder, his tenderness a shock after that ruthless bark. ‘No, Leo, I’m sorry. I didn’t ask you to come here because of that… well, not in the way you’re thinking,’ he added.

‘Then why am I here?’ he asked bleakly.

‘I worry we’ve put you in a difficult situation,’ Pike said gently. ‘Everything we’ve been through since Vulcan has been terrible enough, but asking you to choose between us on top of all that… it was a terribly unfair mistake.’

McCoy held his breath, fingers tightening around his glass. ‘So what’re you saying?’ he rasped warily. ‘You’re just gonna make that choice for me? You already tried pushing me away once, Chris, and it didn’t work…’ But Pike was shaking his head.

‘No, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s still entirely your call, but…’ His eyes flickered towards Jim, as though seeking some confirmation there before he continued. ‘But James and I think there’s another option.’

His eyebrow shot up at the unexpected sound of _James_ on Pike’s lips, so respectful yet startlingly intimate. ‘Really.’ He looked to Jim as well, scrutinizing the restless energy that practically thrummed through his waiting body. ‘And what’s that, exactly?’

‘You don’t have to choose, Bones,’ he said rapidly. His tongue flicked nervously over his lips, his eyes darting back towards Pike. ‘Well, it’s still your choice, of course it is, but if you wanted…’

‘You could have both of us,’ Pike said finally, confirming the unfathomable possibility that had knocked hard at the back of McCoy’s mind as he stared incredulously at Jim. ‘If that’s what you want.’

‘Both of you,’ he echoed numbly.

‘Yes.’

He broke free from the bright determination in Jim’s gaze, glanced back to his Chris. ‘So, what, you think I should keep messing around with Jim on the side?’ he asked cautiously. No matter the slow, dangerous hint of a smile pulling at Pike’s lips, there was no way he was suggesting…

‘I think he deserves better than that,’ Pike corrected softly. ‘And I don’t see any reason to keep him on the side at all.’

A lungful of air slammed out of his body as though punched rough from his lungs, leaving McCoy deflated on the couch, dizzy at the very implication.

‘So... you mean the three of us...’ He waved a useless hand, ‘together...’

‘Why does that surprise you?’

‘Are you kidding?’ He took another steadying sip of his bourbon, hoping its rich perfection could ease his suddenly dry mouth and clumsy tongue. ‘I don’t even know why you’re still talking to me,’ he muttered miserably. ‘After what I did with Jim…’

‘Well, it does make me wish the bridge surveillance hadn’t been disabled for repairs,’ Pike remarked lightly. McCoy glowered into his bourbon, unimpressed.

‘I cheated on you,’ he growled bitterly. ‘Damn it, I’m no better than Jocelyn…’

‘Don’t.’ Pike’s abrupt command cut him off, left him staring hollow and lost at the drink clasped between his hands. ‘Leo, no… this isn’t the same at all…’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘You didn’t do anything I didn’t encourage you to do in the first place,’ Pike said firmly. ‘We may not have always gotten it right, but we’ve never been dishonest with each other. Not like that.’

‘Then I should’ve told you right away,’ he protested bitterly. ‘Hell, I should’ve told _you_ , Jim, a lot sooner than this. Certainly before I went kissing you.’

Jim met his imploring gaze with a tentative, teasing smile. ‘Well, I did kiss you first…’

McCoy rolled his eyes. ‘Damn it, kid…’

‘And I don’t regret it,’ he added stubbornly. ‘Especially not now.’

He stared, breath catching in his throat as Jim rose from his seat and circled the coffee table between them. Paralyzed by a creeping note of panic, McCoy glanced warily at Pike but the other man made no move to interfere, merely watching with a speculative tilt of his head and a hint of interest dancing behind his clear eyes.

By the time he looked back to Jim, he was already upon him, resting one knee on the sofa and bracing a hand on its back as he leaned in and gently traced his slack lower lip. ‘I could never regret this,’ he insisted, a quiet and serious hush that McCoy had only heard from those lips a precious handful of times before. ‘And I hope you don’t either.’

His solemn words demanded something better than his dumb silence, but then Jim was kissing him before he could muster an intelligent answer. Only the barest, most pathetic sound escaped his throat as Jim’s lush tongue slipped him open and delved dangerously deep, dragging up every sordid urge lurking beneath his skin. He arched his throat upon the urging of Jim’s fingers, bending into the angle of their kiss and grasping at Jim’s waist, fingers aching to pull him down into his lap.

McCoy shivered as Jim’s lips slid away from his own, breathless and shaken. His eyelids flickered open as Jim’s mouth played lightly along his jaw, desperately seeking out the other man in the room but his Chris was already there, settling onto the sofa at his other side and gently plucking his near-empty glass from his numb fingers.

‘It’s okay, I’m still here,’ he murmured softly, fingers threading into his hair to tilt his head closer and bare his throat to Jim’s downward moving lips. He teased McCoy’s gaping lips with a series of delicate kisses, tongue sweeping delicately as though begging rather than demanding entrance, until McCoy opened as helplessly for him as he had for Jim, moaning deep in the back of his throat. It felt like ages since he had known the luxury of exploring his lover’s taste like this, so honey-slow with a heat that Pike barely kept in check with each skilled trace of his tongue. His hand, now unencumbered of drink, curled around the back of Pike’s neck and drew him closer, deeper, coaxing out a low growl that purred deep in Pike’s chest. McCoy shivered at the hungry bite of teeth at his lower lip, muffled a needy whine into Pike’s mouth as he lapped fiercely into him, fingers clenching tight in his hair.

Only when he was forced to break away for air did McCoy notice the absence of Jim’s touch. He glanced around guiltily, an apology ready on his tongue that died at the lust-blown expression on Jim’s face, plush mouth sagging open and colour high on his cheekbones.

‘Fuck,’ he breathed. ‘You two are so hot together.’

McCoy blushed furiously, snatched his hand away as Pike’s chuckle vibrated through his chest. ‘I think you’re embarrassing him,’ he murmured fondly. ‘Come here…’

With a knowing grin, Jim slipped confidently into the space of their joined bodies, head tilting into the direction of Pike’s hand as he drew him into a deep kiss of their own. Watching dazedly from so close, McCoy could detect the tension that both undercut and amplified the intensity of their kiss, from the demanding thrust of Jim’s tongue to the warning tug of Pike’s hand in his tousled hair even as he growled appreciatively at Jim’s attempt to take control. They fought, tangled, exchanged power at a whim and drew apart only when the need for breath seemed to get the better of them both, and McCoy drew a ragged gasp of his own, suspecting that he had stopped breathing altogether during that display. Pike’s mouth dragged up Jim’s flushed cheekbone to whisper something into his ear, a secretive smile tugging at his lips as Jim moaned softly, nodded.

Then both pairs of blue eyes were fixed upon him, and McCoy forgot how to breathe all over again. His eyes flicked anxiously between them as they drew apart and pressed into him, two sets of hands conquering the fastenings of his new uniform with far more knowledge than he had mustered since yesterday. Pike’s fingers tugged through his hair with a knowing amount of pressure to bend his head back and ease his access to his uniform’s high collar while Jim’s eager hands slid between his thighs, urging them wider apart. Jim’s mouth latched onto his throat as Pike pulled the cloth apart, suckling hard enough to make McCoy sag back into the sofa cushions with a shaky moan. A hand closed possessively over the bulge in his trousers, groping at the growing shape of his erection and McCoy gasped feverishly in response, even as he hated himself for not knowing whose hand was on him by touch alone.

He could look. Or he could keep his eyes shut and drown in his own ignorance, but he couldn’t even think of which was right so long as they kept on him like this, kept tearing him open faster than he could think, faster than he knew how to feel…

‘Wait… no…’

Even at a hoarse and hesitant whisper, his protest stopped them both. Lips went still, hands loosened their hold just enough for McCoy to surge to his feet, stumbling and cursing as his knee struck the coffee table. Of course he would do this clumsily, with none of the grace or confidence that either man could achieve without even trying.

‘What the hell is this?’ Embarrassment added a harsh edge to his voice as he scrabbled at his disheveled uniform. By contrast, Chris and Jim were flawlessly composed, not a stitch of clothing out of place. ‘I don’t believe you two,’ he growled, ‘how long have you been planning this?’

‘No.’ Pike protested first, ‘no, Leo, that’s not what we–’

‘But you must have talked about this before I got here.’ His frantic eyes slid past Pike’s anxious frown, spotting the empty beer bottle and the dregs of brandy in a snifter and who knew how many more drinks there had been before those two. ‘Clearly you had this all figured out before I even got here. Well, sorry Admiral, Captain,’ he sneered sarcastically as he finally got his uniform jacket refastened over his aching heart, ‘I might be outranked here but that doesn’t mean you get to order me into bed without so much as a by your fucking leave.’

He charged at the door, barely hesitating at the sound of hasty footsteps in his wake. ‘Bones, please... we can explain...’

‘Two clever things like you? Of course you can.’ He spun on his heel to glare back, his resolve wavering at the raw desperation in both their faces. ‘Too damn clever, the both of you,’ he added bitterly, mortified at the prickling sensation caught behind his eyes. ‘I’ll leave you to it, whatever this was meant to be.’

Pike’s eye flicked to the cane leaning by the wall as something stormy descended over him, a frustration that he swiftly repressed with a clenching of his jaw. ‘James,’ he said tightly, ‘go with him.’

‘Don’t you dare,’ McCoy snapped, freezing Jim on his first step to obey. ‘I don’t need hand-holding, Chris, so you can keep your babysitter.’ His narrowed eye slid significantly between the two of them. ‘Keep him as long as you like,’ he muttered, ‘see if I care.’

‘I know how much you care,’ Pike bit out sharply, impatience flashing hard past the hurt written plain across his tired face. The same pain was darkening Jim’s beautiful eyes; McCoy flinched away from them both. ‘Leo…’

Even the plaintive murmur of Pike’s voice couldn’t hold him against the panic thumping hard and reproachful in his chest, a drumbeat that throbbed heavy with guilt before the door had closed behind his hastily retreating footsteps.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pike and Kirk take the reconciliation of their differences into their own hands, but McCoy can’t help but think their solution is too good to be true.

This aimless withdrawal scratching him from the very soles of his feet was too damn familiar, too much like the ugliest days after the divorce to leave McCoy feeling anything but disgusted at his cowardice. He regretted his flight from Pike’s apartment before the lift had even hit solid ground, hesitated when the doors flew open to let him out but he wasn’t anywhere near brave enough to order the lift back up to the twenty-seventh floor. Not so soon, not when he could imagine nothing but disappointment and contempt waiting for him.

Lacking anywhere else to go, he had stopped by his old shared quarters just long enough to discard the uniform in favour of the first civilian clothes he could lay hands on, impulsively shoving more of his things in a carry-all as frustrated lust thickened under his skin at every hint of Jim in the room – a stray running shoe, a well-thumbed paper book, his scent on his rumpled sheets that McCoy shouldn’t have noticed at all if he hadn’t been so goddamn weak. Each messy thing of his reminded McCoy that this space wasn’t his alone, made him itch for neutral ground, for the privacy he needed to unravel some sense from his sloppy impulses.

Which was why he was now huddled in a dark corner of a shitty bar in the Castro where he could drown in two more bourbons and miserably berate himself for being the sort of man who would stomp all over the wildest fantasy he had been harbouring for the past two years.

Okay. Maybe closer to three years.

And if he was being this honest with himself, he had always been too damn slow to accept anything too good to be true. He had held Pike at arms length for the better part of his first term through some bull-headed feat of masochistic stubbornness; if he dared to be even more honest, he had been doing the same to Jim for nearly three years. So much time wasted over his fear and stupid pride, and even an idiot like him knew how little time was left before their damned orders would rip them apart all over again.

Maybe they felt the same anxiety, the same haunting knowledge of time ticking down to crumbs of possibility. He pressed his fingertips hard into the corners of his eyes as the idea crept into the reluctant corners of his mind. His life, after all, had emerged from this most recent disaster with far less damage than either of theirs; the Narada had twisted nothing in his fate beyond repair. He had been groomed to serve on the flagship since before he had even agreed to it and nothing about that plan had been changed save for a promotion to Chief Medical Officer, if only he could bring himself to sign the damn thing.

No fucking way he could say the same for his Chris, or even for Jim. Starfleet had promoted them both too damn soon for their own good and the unfairness of it all rushed bitterly through his blood again. Not for the first time, he felt that familiar burn of protectiveness, tainted now by his failure to protect either of them. In turning them away now, he couldn’t help but worry he had done more harm than good.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be as reckless as he thought. Perhaps they needed this as much as McCoy craved it, as much as he already hungered for them both.

Lowering his hands from his face, he pulled out his comm, methodically sent two identical text-only memos to two recipients, and ordered another drink.

He was mildly surprised that they arrived separately. Pike was first, likely having ordered a shuttlecar to drive him from his apartment. His Chris looked too sleek and composed to have laboured on foot; he dominated the entryway where he paused to scan the darkened room, even without the benefit of his Admiral’s uniform. McCoy watched as he stalked past the bar, taking in fitted trousers and sturdy boots and a thigh-length coat that lashed the air around him as he drew nearer. His uneven gait slowed as he approached the table, a fleeting hesitation that held him back before he bent down on the support of his cane, laid a hand on McCoy’s hunched shoulder and pressed a lingering kiss to his cheek.

McCoy closed his eyes and drew a steadying breath, forcing himself not to turn his face and meet Pike’s lips with his own.

‘Thank you,’ Pike murmured as he drew back. He pulled out the next chair and sat down carefully. ‘Leo, I’m so sorry…’

‘Not yet,’ he interrupted flatly. ‘Still waiting for Jim.’ He glanced up at the door again, not all that surprised to see Jim arrive with comparable speed, eyes rapidly scanning the bar as he unzipped his leather jacket and smoothed out his wind-blown hair with an anxious hand. Pike followed the direction of McCoy’s gaze, no doubt as entranced as he felt.

‘I’m surprised you didn’t just come together,’ McCoy muttered. Pike looked back at him, shook his head.

‘He left not long after you did,’ he said. ‘I tried to tell him you probably needed your space, but he wasn’t having any of that.’

The formidably dour server reached their table at the same time Jim did, looking less aggrieved than before thanks no doubt to that damned Kirk charisma, and took orders for three more drinks before Jim had even dropped into his seat. ‘Bones,’ he said once the server had disappeared again. ‘I looked everywhere…’

‘Except here.’ McCoy tipped his bourbon in a sardonic toast before draining it dry. ‘Needed to lie low a while. Hope you don’t mind.’

He watched through narrowed eyes as Chris and Jim exchanged a look that verged on concerned. Their uncertain pause allowed just enough time for the server to return with their drinks; McCoy exchanged his empty for a full glass but forced himself to hold it cradled between his hands, waiting until they were alone again before he dared to speak.

‘I need to know why you want to do this.’

Another look passed between them, laced this time with a hint of confusion. ‘I thought we already explained…’ Pike began tentatively.

‘Not really,’ he said stiffly. ‘No, I think you and Jim had a nice cozy chat and maybe you both know what you’re after but I sure as shit don’t. So we’re gonna talk about it here and maybe seeing as we’re in public you’ll be less inclined to feel me up before you’re done explaining yourselves.’

At least they both had the good sense to look sheepish, or as close to it as men like them would ever get. ‘That’s my fault,’ Jim said swiftly. ‘I know I shouldn’t have kissed you, but–’

‘But you did.’ There was no holding off another second; he took a soothing taste of his bourbon, kept his gaze fixed in its depths as he continued. ‘And damn it, Jim, I’m not complaining, but… well, that’s how it’s always gone. With both of you,’ he elaborated, taking them both in a glance. ‘You two can kiss and you can fuck like it’s nothing, and I keep getting dragged under...’

‘It’s never been nothing,’ Pike said, quiet but with a fierce undercurrent that already had McCoy regretting his words. ‘You know it was never that meaningless…’

‘I know, darling.’ He cut Pike off with a weary hand, a glance that begged for understanding of his inadequate words. ‘And I dunno, I like to think even this insane idea isn’t just for kicks but when you’re that quick to drag me off to bed… I mean, have you thought about this?’

‘Do you want an honest answer to that question?’ 

McCoy threw Pike a pointed glare, though he could feel the reluctant amusement pulling at his lips already. ‘Stop being cute, Chris,’ he scolded tiredly. ‘It’s not helping.’

‘I know,’ he sighed. Pike tasted his brandy, gave it a disapproving look as he lowered his glass. ‘But I don’t know how to give you the answers you need.’

‘Well, that makes two of us.’ He dared a glance at Jim, studying the uncertainty he seemed determined to pour into his beer. ‘This isn’t just about me though, it can’t be. I mean, are you two...’ 

‘Nothing has happened between us,’ Pike clarified swiftly.

‘But you’d like it to.’

‘I would.’ he confirmed. ‘I may have resisted Kirk’s various passes these last three years,’ he added wryly, ‘but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sorely tempted.’

‘You couldn’t have been that tempted,’ Jim said, almost sullenly. ‘Right from the start you were shoving me off with some lame line about how you were _involved_ with someone else…’

‘And I was.’ Pike nodded significantly towards McCoy.

‘Oh.’ For a moment, Jim was merely chastened but then his brow furrowed, mind chugging along quickly behind his eyes. ‘But… hold on, how long have you two…?’

‘A bit over three years,’ McCoy filled in quietly, his lingering shame over his long deception relieved somewhat as Pike rewarded him with a privately fond smile. Jim was looking at him now too, though his astonished expression was unchanged.

‘Three years?’ he echoed. ‘But we’ve barely been in Starfleet three years, how did you two ever… oh, wow.’ Jim’s eyes widened. ‘Is _that_ what you were doing in the shuttle bathroom?’

‘Shuttle bathroom?’ Pike echoed dubiously, but McCoy quickly shook his head.

‘Damn it, Jim, I was nearly vomiting in there.’ He shot an embarrassed look at Pike, then stared into the bourbon cradled between his hands. ‘Before that, back in Georgia. Our Commandant of Cadets here had a bad habit of scraping the future of Starfleet off bar room floors,’ he added dryly.

‘Don’t blame me for where you were spending your days when I came looking,’ Pike said, feigning innocence. ‘You know I had orders to find you once Starfleet thought the timing was right.’

McCoy snorted inelegantly. ‘As soon as they knew I was flat broke and drunk off my ass, you mean.’ 

‘Are you forgetting horny?’ Pike asked lightly. 

‘I wasn’t anything of the sort until you swaggered into Dufresne’s wearing that uniform,’ he snapped. ‘Damned bad influence.’ He glanced self-consciously at Jim, wincing at the open fascination written across his face, like he was seeing McCoy for the first time and wasn’t quite sure what to make of the pieces. It reminded him of that first wary look they had exchanged on the Riverside shuttle when he had been stinking of booze and night sweat while Jim still managed to exude that damned sexual magnetism of his, even with a split lip and bloodstains on his shirt.

‘This probably isn’t what you had in mind at all, Jim,’ he murmured regretfully. ‘You didn’t realize that Chris and I…’

‘That doesn’t mean I don’t want it.’ A smile played across his full lips but the light in Jim’s eyes was sharply determined. ‘And like he said, I’ve been flirting with the Admiral since he was a mere Captain. I’m not likely to turn him down now.’

‘Of course you’re not,’ he muttered, slouching down into his chair. As much as he could empathize, he was unprepared for Jim’s raw appreciation of his Chris; by comparison, he felt sloppy in the clothes he had snatched off his dorm room floor. ‘I get it, the _Admiral_ here is a much more attractive catch. Who knows, maybe you haven’t fucked that far up the chain of command yet.’

‘Leo,’ Pike snapped angrily, confirming the awful regret already sinking through his bones and fuelling a fear intensified by Jim’s unconscious flinch.

‘He believed in me before anyone else did,’ Jim said quietly, dark eyelashes shuttering his downward gaze. ‘He saw past all the crap everyone condemned me for, even you,’ he added with a defensive glare that had McCoy staring shamefully into his bourbon,

‘I know… fuck, I’m sorry, Jim,’ he said roughly. ‘You didn’t deserve that. I...’ His hands curled into fists on the tabletop and maybe his impulse to flee was written all over his face because Pike’s hand closed over his wrist before he could even consider pushing his chair back.

‘Why do you keep trying to push us away?’ he asked gently. Pike’s thumb brushed the skin just below the sleeve of his pullover, a hypnotic and steady touch that rubbed away the sharpest edges of his fear.

‘Just seeing the two of you together… you can’t want me when you could have that,’ he muttered, a frail rasp that scraped his heart dry. ‘Neither of you should...’

‘Are you kidding?’ Jim reached for his other hand, coaxing his clenched fingers to relax into his grasp. ‘Bones... why else would we be here?’

He shook his head, feeling unworthy of the dual comfort of both their hands holding on with enough strength to keep him anchored against every cowardly impulse that told him to run before the rug was pulled out from under his wildest hopes. ‘If you just want each other,’ he attempted stiffly, eyes still fixed on the sticky tabletop, ‘you don’t need to feel obliged...’

‘Like hell we feel _obliged_ ,’ Pike insisted harshly. ‘No matter what interest we have in each other, we’ve only come to this point because of you. We both want _you_.’

‘That isn’t exactly the same thing as what you’re suggesting.’ He chewed at his lower lip, head still bowed. The idea of being caught between these two powerfully confident men was intoxicating, terrifying. ‘I don’t want to get torn up between the two of you like some fucking chew toy you can’t figure out how to share. If this ends up being some twisted competition between you two… if it goes wrong…’

‘It won’t go wrong,’ Jim protested sharply.

‘It might.’ Pike threw Jim an impatient look that faded quickly into something softer. ‘There’s no guarantee of avoiding misunderstandings. Leo knows that better than either of us. And I won’t pretend this is an easy choice to make, or even a very sensible one. We can’t offer you anything easy or uncomplicated here,’ he added, speaking to McCoy now as he twined their fingers together. ‘But I swear we’re going to do everything in our power to keep you happy, if you’ll let us try.’

His downward gaze slipped between each of his hands, from his Chris at his left to Jim at his right. They both felt so damn right, no matter what the fears ghosting his soul had to say about it. Anxiously, he wet his dry lips – he didn’t dare let either man go to reach for his bourbon, and his thirst went deeper than booze anyway.

‘If we’re doing this,’ he said slowly, cautiously, ‘we’re doing this together. This can’t just be about me, or me and each of you on your own terms. This has to be about _us_. All three of us.’

‘We wouldn’t want it any other way.’ Pike lifted his hand, planted a discrete kiss against the pulse hammering beneath the fragile skin of his wrist. ‘Will you trust us to show you?’ he asked softly, lips still brushing against his veins. 

Experience allowed McCoy to see the full depth of the question Pike asked beneath this gentle talk of trust. This was a negotiation for control, a plea for surrender that shivered instinctively down the base of his spine. He glanced warily at Jim, waiting so avidly for his reply, quite possibly oblivious to the implication hanging between them.

‘Not that,’ Pike added, as though reading the cause of his hesitation. His teeth flashed in a brief grin, scraped his skin just hard enough to show his understanding of where McCoy’s mind had gone. ‘Not yet.’

‘Damn it, Chris,’ he growled, glancing frantically at Jim’s slack-jawed reaction and hoping the dim lighting was hiding some of the arousal heating his face. Maybe not, given the hungry anticipation narrowing Jim’s eyes as they flicked down to the contact point of Pike’s mouth on his wrist. Jim’s tongue dashed across his own lips, catching McCoy’s eye in turn and nearly distracting him from the hand that slipped along his thigh under the table.

‘You sure this place is too public?’ Jim asked, flirty and low as his fingertips traced the inseam of his jeans. Biting down on his lower lip, McCoy scanned the mostly empty bar speculatively from their dark corner, and nearly choked on a groan as Pike closed his lips around one of his fingers and Jim brushed his knuckles over the bulge tenting his jeans.

‘I… _ah_ , am not doing this in some filthy dive…’

‘Why not?’ Pike released his finger with a delicate lick and leaned in closer, close enough to press his lips instead to the shiver-inducing hollow beneath his jaw. ‘James and I could take you over this table if that’s what you want…’

He bucked into Jim’s hand in his lap with a stuttering groan but forced himself to restrain his lust and meet Jim’s eyes across the table, no matter how hard he might still be blushing. It was worth it to see those first glimmers of genuine excitement break loose of a shyness he hadn’t even realized had been there until it was gone. 

‘Bones…?’

‘Yeah, Jim.’ He smiled, maybe a bit shy himself but Jim’s answering grin was incandescent, bright enough for all three of them. ‘Not here,’ he added sternly, curling a hand into Pike’s hair to gently draw his distracting mouth away. ‘There’s a… hotel, around the corner.’ Each word was an effort, tugged into sense from his every urge to succumb to them both, here and now. ‘I’m already booked into a suite there.’

Both men pulled back at his words, letting him loose and staring incredulously at him. ‘And you thought _we_ were being presumptuous?’ Jim sputtered finally.

‘Nothing presumptuous about it.’ He fished out a cred chip and tapped it on the table’s clapped-out payment console. ‘Not like I was gonna go back to our quarters if this had gone belly-up. But there does happen to be a very big bed up there that I think I’ll like a hell of a lot better with some company to keep it warm.’

‘I think we can do more than keep it warm,’ Pike murmured as he rose to his feet. He took his cane into one hand, extended the other to McCoy. ‘Shall we?’

McCoy polished off his bourbon, dousing the last of his nerves before taking Pike’s hand and letting himself be pulled upright into a tender kiss. Brief though it was, their lips parted instinctively for each other, allowing McCoy to taste him with a depth that bordered on indecency. He drew back with a quiet moan, turned his head to find Jim standing at his side and it only seemed proper to slide his hand around his waist and draw him close to receive the same promising kiss, his teeth catching Jim’s full bottom lip in an effort to stop himself short of begging them to take him on the table after all.

‘Let’s go,’ he whispered roughly, pulling reluctantly away from them both and snagging his coat from the back of his chair. The sooner they got some privacy, the better.

Though McCoy couldn’t help the rush of pride that swelled through his chest as he caught the admiring stare of their server on their way out. Bad influence, the both of them.

They kept their hands and their thoughts to themselves on the short walk to the hotel around the corner where they waited in silence for the lift to take them into the modern tower extension soaring above the heritage lobby. Once secluded in the lift’s privacy, however, Jim slid up close to his side, hips pressing tight enough to his thigh for McCoy to feel the full length and hardness of him. Releasing a soft groan, McCoy sagged back against the lift’s wall, pulling him indecently closer with a groping hand over his ass while Pike slipped his fingers beneath his shirt and nipped sharply at the bared stretch of his throat, soothing the tantalizing sting with a tongue that slipped to his ear and whispered a filthy suggestion that shivered through his body and nearly drowned out the chime and swish of the doors opening on their floor. He stared, wide-eyed at the dimmed and thankfully empty corridor beyond.

‘We’re… ah…’

‘ _Yes_...’ Pike hissed the confirmation in his ear but it was Jim’s hand that snared his rough coat and dragged him from the lift. 

‘Which room, Bones?’ Jim’s hands were restless over his body, caught between pulling him along and holding him close. ‘Show us where to take you…’

He scanned the sleek, anonymous walls, struggling to recall the geography from his hasty check-in, especially with the distraction of Pike’s mouth still tormenting his neck. ‘This way,’ he decided finally, relieved as his key code activated the first familiar door to catch his eye. That last barrier slid away beneath his hand, tumbling them into a sprawling suite that was familiar only for his overnight bag flung into a corner by the wide bed. It was a far nicer room than he remembered, generously proportioned with a curtain wall of polarized windows gazing over San Francisco and flooding the suite with the red glow of dwindling daylight. 

McCoy had the briefest moment to admire this place, then Jim was slipping his hands under his coat and shoving it down his arms until it dropped in defeat to the floor and opened his body to Jim’s touch, to the heat of Pike’s body crowding close behind. Pressed securely between them, he lost sight of all else as two pairs of hands swiftly stripped him of both clothing and sense, urging his mute obedience as Pike pulled his shirt off over his head. His upraised arms free to move again, he dropped one hand to the back of Pike’s neck while the other reached blindly for Jim, catching a strong shoulder beneath his leather jacket as he slipped a hand inside McCoy’s unfastened jeans. His fingers clutched tighter to them both as Jim closed a warm hand around his overeager cock, gasping at the first slide of fingers along his length, struggling to wrap his head around this even as Jim nipped playfully at his lips and dropped gracefully to his knees.

‘Shit, Jim…’ McCoy blinked downward, arrested by the slow sweep of Jim’s pink tongue over his full lips before he took his cock into his mouth. Dark eyelashes shuttered those intense eyes as Jim moaned luxuriously around him, a hungry little sound that vibrated through his flesh and made his fingers clench in Jim’s leather jacket.

‘Does he feel as good as he looks on your cock?’ Pike hushed from behind his ear, dirty and soft. He reached around McCoy’s tensing hip and combed a hand through Jim’s tousled hair, cradling his head with just enough intent to suggest control over his movements. ‘Is this the first time you’ve had his mouth on you, beautiful?’

‘Yeah…’ He answered both questions in a single awed breath that choked itself short as Jim took him impossibly deep, so tight and wet. ‘Oh, _fuck_ , Jim…’ Far more embarrassing words were simmering on his tongue; he turned his head sharply to the side, tugged Pike into an awkward, desperate kiss to stifle his own voice, to find an outlet that would stop his hand from seizing Jim’s hair and fucking his throat for all he was worth. Pike responded flawlessly, growling low against his lips and dropping his other hand down to the root of McCoy’s cock, holding him steady for the slow slide of Jim’s mouth along his length. 

For some uncountable time, this tight entanglement of fingers and tongues and muffled moans was perfect, suspending his lust at a lazy, decadent tempo that threatened to break too soon as Jim’s tongue teased him with near-acrobatic precision. McCoy’s knees buckled as pleasure spiked hard through his nerves; only Pike’s quick reflexes kept him on his feet, though he scrambled quickly to regain control and avoid taxing Pike’s recovering strength. ‘Too much,’ he gasped by way of a huge understatement, squeezing his eyes shut to steady his arousal. ‘Bed,’ he insisted tightly, clinging hard to both men. ‘Now.’

‘Couldn’t agree more,’ Pike murmured. ‘You first.’

A nudge forward tripped his feet up in his jeans faster than Jim could finish stripping them away; he dropped to the mattress, breath knocked from his lungs as unseen hands did away with everything down to his boots. Stripped bare and splayed across the bed, McCoy stared up at the two men looming over him as they reached simultaneously for their own clothes, visibly eager to strip and join McCoy on the bed as quickly as possible. 

‘Wait,’ he said hoarsely, frowning at the businesslike efficiency of it all. He pushed himself up on his elbows and nervously wet his lips as they both paused at the sound of his voice, waiting for him to continue. ‘Undress each other,’ he decided, relieved that the request came out a lot less timid than he felt. ‘Slowly.’

Jim grinned brightly and looked to Pike, who was still staring back at McCoy with an impressed smirk. ‘Should we put on a show for you?’ he asked slyly.

‘If you like.’ McCoy shuffled upward on the wide bed, shoving pillows into place as he reclined to watch, one leg bent upright and fingers resting lightly upon his inner thigh. Really, he had only wanted to draw this out and evade some of that intense dual focus of theirs for a moment, but as Pike hooked his fingers into the waistband of Jim’s jeans and tugged him sharply closer, McCoy silently praised himself for the good idea. 

Sure enough, they made an indecent display of it, slipping hands under layers of clothing and lazily kissing as they peeled away one garment at a time. They were gorgeous together, both so strong and confident that the sight of them stirred that old familiar ache of unworthiness that came so natural whenever he admired either man too closely. Only it didn’t dismay him the way it once did; this was more like awe layering itself onto his lust and urging his fingers to close loosely around his cock, stroking idly as he watched his two lovers unravel each other with increasing urgency. They were both stripped to the waist now, Jim’s skin so flawlessly smooth as he slid down his Chris’ lean body, plush mouth worshipping sharply defined abdominal muscles as he worked those snug trousers down his thighs. He briefly nuzzled Pike’s cock on his way back up, something shockingly like reverence flickering from his bottomless blue eyes as he pulled Pike into another searing kiss. A low, familiar growl poured from Pike’s throat as he yanked open Jim’s jeans and shoved a hand inside, grinning triumphantly against Jim’s gaping lips as he clearly found the younger man’s cock. He worked Jim’s jeans down his hips, just far enough to expose his dick to McCoy’s greedy eyes. As though sensing his stare, Pike threw him a sidelong glance, smiling fondly as his gaze dropped down to McCoy’s hand on himself. 

‘Any requests, beautiful?’ 

McCoy slowed his strokes, used only his thumb to tease himself as he considered. It was audacious, maybe, but these two had always inspired him to reckless things. ‘On your knees, Chris,’ he murmured, eyes narrowed. ‘I want to see your mouth on him.’

Jim’s beautiful eyes flew open, gleaming with disbelief. ‘Shit, Bones, really?’

Pike arched an eyebrow, but the playful curl of his lips accepted the challenge. He sank unhesitatingly to the floor, taking Jim’s jeans further down as he leaned inward and licked a wet trail up the inside of his thigh to his groin. Jim, meanwhile, was looking rapidly between the two of them like he could scarcely believe his luck, though he eventually settled for the far more attractive view as Pike trailed his tongue lightly along the underside of his cock.

‘Fuck…’ he breathed, his fingers clinging to Pike’s shoulders like a lifeline, like he didn’t dare grab anywhere else for fear of breaking the spell. His brilliant eyes flickered shut as Pike’s lips closed around him, mouth sagging wide open. ‘Oh… _oh_ , fuck…’ 

McCoy grinned, recognizing at a glance the moment Jim realized that putting Pike on his knees didn’t make him the slightest bit submissive. ‘So what exactly did you two have in mind?’ he asked lightly, enjoying the sex-blown confusion in Jim’s face as he fought to focus on McCoy’s question and not whatever sinful things Pike’s mouth was doing to him.

‘Uh… we didn’t really plan that far…’ 

‘But you must have thought about it,’ he urged. Heavens knew McCoy had his own ideas of how this could go, but he owed Jim the choice, and was aching with curiosity to know what he would like. ‘Unless that time in the captain’s chair fulfilled all your fantasies at once…’

‘I want you to fuck me.’ Jim confessed it in a rush, dark eyelashes shuddering as he gasped and clutched tighter at Pike’s shoulders. Clearly his Chris had done something especially wicked in that moment, probably in an effort to speed along his tongue and McCoy let loose his own low groan and squeezed his fingers tighter around himself. 

‘Do you now.’ He aimed for a lazy drawl, but the excitement in his throat husked his words and laid his every raw reaction bare. ‘But you look like you’re having such a good time right where you are...’

‘It’s... ah, a good start...’ Jim allowed breathlessly. His eyes flickered open again, staring downward as Pike’s tongue circled him lewdly, teasing out the pre-come rapidly staining his lips. He played Jim like it was a performance, and the glint in his eyes as he drew back to glance up at his prey was nothing short of feral.

‘Probably more of a good thing than our young captain can handle,’ he murmured. 

‘I didn’t say that,’ Jim protested, somewhat unconvincingly. His eyes were glassy with arousal, his hips still arching reflexively towards Pike’s smirking lips.

‘Get up there and show him how much you want his cock in you,’ Pike commanded softly. He casually swatted Jim’s ass as he nudged him towards the bed, making McCoy’s breath catch in his throat though Jim was utterly unfazed as he lunged upon the bed and crawled up the length of his body until they lay flush together, pressed at thighs and chests and cocks as Jim curled a hand under McCoy’s neck and pulled him into a kiss. He groaned gratefully into Jim’s mouth, grasping Jim’s waist with both hands as he struggled to compose himself against the overwhelming sensation of finally feeling Jim’s naked body, so smooth and lively, up against his own. He held on tight, trying to still Jim’s restless movement just long enough to savour his weight, his heat, the cleverness of his tongue taking him apart. 

A needy, god-awful whimper escaped his throat as Jim abandoned his lips and began kissing along his jaw instead, slow and almost reverent as they lay a wet path down to the hollow of his throat, even further down to his chest. Panting hard with anticipation, McCoy felt the mattress shift beneath his back and rolled his head aside to watch dazedly as Pike settled alongside them. His eyes were heated, pupils blown as his gaze slipped up and down the length of their joined bodies.

‘I see you came prepared,’ he murmured, a hint of a smirk on his lips as he waved the small bottle of lube that McCoy had thrown into his overnight bag on an impulsive whim.

‘Never said I wasn’t interested,’ he grumbled defensively, scowling at Pike’s smug tone, at least until Jim’s tongue flicked over his nipple and flung him back into brain-melting distraction. His fingers buried themselves in Jim’s hair as he writhed beneath the hint of teeth scraping over his chest, fighting all the while to keep his eyes open, to hold Pike’s heated stare. Despite Pike’s raw appreciation, McCoy felt a self-conscious flutter of concern at his position, unraveling beneath Jim’s body while his Chris watched from the sidelines. ‘Are you sure…’

‘Are you seriously asking?’ With a narrowed eye, Pike slipped a hand down Jim’s back, down between their bodies to curl around McCoy’s cock. ‘I love seeing you like this...’ he said, a low rumble that shot through McCoy’s bloodstream. ‘You’re too gorgeous not to be shared.’

‘Be nice if you did more than watch,’ he said, breath stuttering as Pike lightly fondled him. ‘More than that, even,’ he added at Pike’s wry grin.

‘If you insist,’ Pike murmured, letting his hand slip away much to McCoy’s frustration. ‘Shall I finger him open for you, beautiful?’

‘ _Yes_.’ Jim pulled his mouth away from its efforts to memorize McCoy’s ribs to growl out his answer before McCoy could recover from the question. ‘Fuck, please...’

Pike laughed softly and leaned inward to reward Jim with a fleetingly filthy kiss before shifting further down the bed. McCoy hoisted himself up on his elbows, staring as Pike closed his powerful hands around Jim’s hips, coaxing his ass upward with an encouraging trail of open-mouthed kisses along the small of his back. Jim arched willingly for him, crawling backward into Pike’s hands until his mouth breathed hot over McCoy’s achingly hard cock. His eyes fell shut as that sinful mouth took him again, lips humming around him in response to whatever unseen things Pike was doing to him.

Head sagging forward, McCoy drew several shaking breaths, fighting to recover control of himself before daring to open his eyes again. That was probably wise, given the brain-searing spectacle Jim was making of himself, writhing wantonly between his enthusiastic attentions to McCoy’s cock and the slow, steady plunge of Pike’s fingers fucking him open. Drawn perhaps by the whimper that tore up the back of his throat, Pike met his gaze over the restless perfection of Jim’s back, connecting with a charge of recognition that flayed him wide open. 

‘You wish this was you, don’t you?’ he murmured, running an appreciative hand up Jim’s spine. 

His eye followed the trail of Pike’s fingertips up to a shoulder, back down to the curve of Jim’s ass, taking in his receptive body in an envious glance. ‘Yeah,’ he admitted softly. ‘Yeah, I think I do.’

‘I’d like to see that,’ Pike said softly as he twisted his hand slowly, forcing a low groan from Jim that vibrated through McCoy’s cock. ‘You’d look so hot on your knees between us, taking both our cocks at once…’

Jim slid wetly off his dick, drawing a shaky breath as he pushed greedily back onto Pike’s hand. ‘Fuck me…’ he gasped. His brilliant eyes were feverish with lust, his hands kneading desperately at McCoy’s thighs.

‘That was the plan, darling.’ Jim’s lips were so red; McCoy passed his thumb over his full lower lip, smudging obscenely through the slickness of saliva and pre-come staining his swollen mouth.

‘No, I know…’ Jim licked over his thumb, eyelashes shivering downward as he curled a hand around McCoy’s cock, cradling him in the warmth of his hand. ‘I know, but _fuck_ , does he always talk like that?’

McCoy grinned. ‘Yeah,’ he admitted proudly. ‘He kinda does.’

‘Are you complaining?’ Pike leaned forward, licking the sweat pooling at the small of Jim’s back. His arm still moved beyond where McCoy could see the turn and tempo of his hand but Jim’s sudden whimper gave him a clue to what those fingers were doing.

‘N-no, not at all…’ Jim’s head dropped, lips and cheek nuzzling feverishly at McCoy’s erection. ‘Just… fuck, please, more…’

Pike smiled sharply as he shoved his free hand up the restless curve of Jim’s spine. ‘Get back to work, son,’ he murmured silkily, pushing Jim’s mouth back onto McCoy’s cock with a large hand on the back of his head. ‘I know our Leo is almost more than your gorgeous mouth can take,’ he added, meeting McCoy’s eye with a lascivious wink, ‘but you’re going to get that dick good and wet because I’m keeping you nice and tight for him. I want you to feel every hot inch of him when he fucks you…’

Jim’s low whimper muffled itself around McCoy’s cock, layering itself on his own aroused moan. He shuddered as Jim’s involuntary sounds vibrated around him, staring at the rhythmic roll of his hips between Pike’s hand and the bed.

‘And maybe if you’re a good fuck for my Leo, I’ll give you more,’ Pike offered sweetly. ‘I’ll fill you up with as many of my fingers as you want once he’s done with you, use his come to open you up, loose and wet enough to take my whole hand… is that what you want, my greedy, ambitious boy…’ 

Jim’s fingers gouged delectable bruises into McCoy’s thighs, his sole warning before Jim’s mouth went slack around him with a strangled cry and the rest of his body tensed into orgasm. Stunned by a simultaneous rush of lust, McCoy carded his fingers through Jim’s hair as his hips jerked between Pike’s hand and the bed, relishing every tremor of his pleasure as it rushed beneath his flawless skin.

‘Definitely don’t think you’re complaining now,’ he teased. A weak groan answered him as Jim’s head moved beneath his hand.

‘It’s your fault,’ Jim panted, glaring reproachfully over his shoulder into Pike’s satisfied smirk. ‘You can’t go saying shit like that and expect me not to lose it.’

‘You’ll get used to it,’ McCoy murmured fondly, brushing a thumb over the lovely flush staining his cheekbone. ‘Come here…’

He dragged Jim’s still-quivering body into his chest and took his lips in a slow and tender kiss, lapping at his uneven breaths and drawing out every lingering whimper of pleasure at the back of his throat. His arms closed around Jim’s body, clinging tight as he rolled them over on the wide mattress until Jim landed on his back, spread out shaken and perfect beneath him.

‘Should I give you a moment, sweetheart?’ he hushed, lips still brushing over the swollen heat of Jim’s mouth. His watchful eyes were soon flooded with the intense blue of Jim’s eyes flickering open to fix him with a heated, determined stare.

‘Don’t you dare,’ he said. Conviction cut clear through the breathless edge in his voice, making McCoy smile against his mouth.

‘Thought you might say that,’ he murmured. ‘And I’ll bet I can wring another one out of you soon enough…’

‘I’m sure you will.’ Jim flashed a bright grin as he drew a leg up around McCoy’s hip, pulling them hard together. ‘Fuck me, Bones,’ he said, eyes narrowing to predatory points of light. No willpower in the universe could have resisted that invitation, and McCoy had never been the strongest willed creature. If nothing else, his hand was reliably steady as he reached down between them and tested Jim’s entrance, finding him slick yet snug, clenching around the two fingers he slipped inside.

Biting back a moan, McCoy squeezed his eyes shut, forced his fingers to nudge tentatively at Jim’s entrance. Knowing that Pike’s fingers had slicked him open added a shivering edge to his excitement, but still he hesitated. ‘Are you sure you’re ready...?’

‘You have no idea how long I’ve been ready for you.’ Jim moved restlessly beneath him, spreading his thighs wider and kneading over the tensing muscles of his back. ‘Go on, do it, please…’

Beneath his lust, a passing ache filled his chest even as he let his fingers slide away and aimed his cock into place. ‘Jim…’ he breathed, burying his face in the smooth shelter of his throat. ‘Jim, I… 

He didn’t manage to say anything more eloquent before Jim’s strong calf around his hips tugged him down and inside. There were no more words left inside him, nothing but a grateful groan as he sank home into Jim’s tight heat. For a resounding moment of helplessly suspended pleasure, McCoy didn’t dare to move for fear of breaking the subtle rhythm of Jim already moving around him. His whole body clenched around him, squirming gently with an impatience that seemed so natural to him that McCoy felt a deliriously fond smile pulling at his lips. Gathering sense from his awestruck paralysis, he pulled slowly back and thrust again, releasing a satisfied moan as Jim arched and cried out beneath him. 

‘Again,’ he gasped, eyes flickering open to reveal that shocking glimmer of blue. ‘Please, Bones, again...’

Even without his pleading, McCoy was helpless to do anything but obey, moving deep but slow into Jim’s tight heat. He was addicted now to every responsive squirm of Jim’s pleasure, every twitch and moan. Nothing could stop him, save for the slide of familiar fingers over his rolling hips, slick and possessive as they slipped to the inner surface of his thighs.

‘Chris…’ It slipped from his mouth like a plea, made McCoy bury his face against Jim’s shoulder with a moan that was part desire, part embarrassment. His hips slowed as they stuttered between the need to push back onto Pike’s fingers and his fear of Jim’s reaction. He didn’t know how this should go, but then Jim’s fingers were clasping his head, forcing his gaze with an encouraging smile. 

‘Let him do it,’ he urged softly, brushing a kiss against McCoy’s lips. ‘I want to see… want to feel him fuck you into me…’

Another moan spilled from his mouth, inspired in some part by the rough edge in Jim’s low voice but even more by the swift entry of Pike’s fingers breaching him. His thighs parted instinctively, his hips slowing to accommodate the slick thrust of two fingers plunging deep, sliding out, teasing at his hole before sinking back in with three. It was impossible to concentrate fully on Jim when Pike’s fingers were tormenting him so mercilessly, but Pike’s other hand planted on his hip kept him moving into Jim at a slow, shallow rhythm that left McCoy free to drop his brow against Jim’s chest and cling tight to his body while Pike fingered him open.

He muffled a low whine against Jim’s shoulder as Pike replaced his fingers with his cock, sinking into him one slow shallow thrust at a time. He hadn’t felt his Chris’ cock since before Vulcan, before the Narada, and no private time with his own hand in the last lonely weeks had ever been the same as this deeper, more visceral pleasure. A shuddering desire shook his body between them, his fingers no doubt bruising Jim’s skin as he choked on a needy cry.

‘Shit, Bones... shhh...’ Jim murmured nonsense into his ear, ran a soothing hand along his heaving rib cage. Behind him, Pike had gone still and stretched along the full length of his quivering spine, brushing kisses over the sweating nape of his neck with a delicacy that nearly broke him in half. His gaping mouth drew in a shaky breath, eyes squeezing shut to hold back any reaction more embarrassing than that, especially when they were both so close, with hardly any air to breathe between them.

‘Alright, beautiful?’ Pike asked softly. 

He nodded mutely, the raw edges of his lust calmed by the tangled touch of their fingers meeting on his body before Pike pressed a kiss to his shoulder and drew back. Closing his long fingers around his hips, Pike pulled most of the way out, hovered for a tantalizing pause then thrust into him _hard_ , hard enough to drive McCoy’s cock deeper into Jim and make the man beneath him moan loud in response. Jim’s young, powerful body responded readily to Pike’s pace, hips rising off the mattress to meet every thrust of McCoy’s cock, driving himself upon its full length as Pike sent him plunging downward into Jim’s heat. The relentless flow of movement was overwhelming, left McCoy helplessly suspended between them.

With great effort, he braced both hands against the mattress and pushed himself upright, the better to appreciate the sight of Jim spread beneath him, throat arched invitingly and both hands braced on the headboard above him for leverage against Pike’s momentum. His cock was filling out again, resting half-erect between his legs and Jim let loose a delicious whine as McCoy reached down to fondle him, to feel the blood quickening beneath the velvet flesh.

Jim let one hand drift from the headboard and reached down to tangle his fingers with McCoy’s around his cock, setting the pace for his own pleasure that swiftly robbed McCoy of the little control he had left. ‘God, yes, Jim…’ With considerable effort, McCoy slipped his hand out of Jim’s way, pressing at his fingers just long enough to keep him stroking along his length. ‘I want to watch you,’ he murmured, greedily taking in everything of his taut sensually abandoned body. 

Even so, it was hard not to touch; his fingers twitched uncertainly, reached tentatively for a handhold in the spoiled sheets but then Pike’s hands were closing around his arms from behind, sliding down to his wrists and pulling backward. McCoy gasped, back arching as Pike held his hands together at the small of his back and drove his hips forward on another powerful thrust of his cock that shot white-hot through him. He writhed hard against Pike’s body at his back, his helpless arousal escalating as Pike’s fingers tightened to hold his wrists in one powerful hand. The impromptu restraint was perfect, so badly needed that he couldn’t bother to conceal the fullness of his reaction from Jim’s gaze. All the same, he shied away from the dawning awareness in Jim’s eyes, his head turning sharply aside as arousal climbed too swiftly up his captive body.

‘Watch him,’ Pike urged sharply, biting a warning to the nape of his neck. ‘I want your eyes on him when I make you come… want you to feel us both…’

An involuntary sound, part moan and part delirium, escaped his throat. Even with his eyes shut, there was no escaping the dual sensation of both men, of fucking and being fucked, his body drawn between them like a thread pulling taut before snapping in two. Only as he made himself obey and stare down at Jim beneath him, there was no break in his pleasure, only an endless feedback loop of lust that built higher, sharper, brighter until Pike’s teeth sank into his trembling shoulder on an especially hard thrust that drove him over the edge and into Jim’s body. Mouth gaping around a soundless cry of pleasure, McCoy watched as Jim’s eyes widened with a pleasure that bordered on possessive as his body flexed and clenched around the last hard beats of his orgasm.

He nearly collapsed forward as the last spasms shuddered out of him, threatening to crush Jim with his depleted body but Pike drew him back with a strong arm slung around his torso, pulling him effortlessly upward until he was held tight, back to chest. ‘We’re not done with you yet,’ he hushed into his ear, hips still rocking to make his cock move gently within him, so hard and deep. ‘You’re going to pleasure us both before we let you go…’

‘Yes…’ He nodded weakly in agreement, nowhere near as forceful as the desire still hammering in his chest. ‘Please…’ His hands, still held tight in Pike’s grasp, twisted restlessly to touch Jim; Pike released him with a low hum, pressing a kiss behind his ear.

‘I’m sure he’d love to have your mouth on him,’ he murmured. ‘Wouldn’t you, James?’

Jim’s eyes blew wide with lust, though McCoy doubted he felt anywhere near the heat that burned through his body and made his exhausted cock twitch within Jim’s ass. He knew exactly why Pike had offered that suggestion, but his embarrassment was nothing to the gratitude that made him twist his head around and steal a quick, too-sloppy kiss before meeting Jim’s glassy stare.

‘Sounds like a plan,’ he drawled breathlessly. Reluctantly, he let himself slip free from Jim’s body as he leaned down and grasped Jim’s hips, nudging him further up the bed. ‘Would you like that, sweetheart?’ He dragged his open mouth over the smooth flesh of his flexing stomach, scenting his way further down towards his cock.

‘Oh, fuck, yes…’ After a spell of shocked paralysis, Jim scrambled to move into a better position against the heaped pillows at the top of the bed, allowing McCoy more space to stretch along the mattress between the foundation of Pike’s cock still seated deep inside him and the enticement of Jim’s hard length resting flushed and full against his abdomen. McCoy slipped his fingers around him, holding him steady as he closed his lips around the head. The immediate sensation of Jim filling his mouth while Pike thrust into him again was overwhelming; if he had not already come it would have undone him completely. As it was, being wrung dry for this left him blissfully hollowed out, a vessel to be used for their pleasure alone and damned if that thought didn’t make even his depleted cock throb between his legs. He moaned greedily around Jim’s cock, eyes squeezing shut as he felt unsteady fingers threading through his sweat-damp hair.

Stronger fingers were pressing bruises into his hips, kneading and angling him into thrusts that grew more erratic as Jim released his own low groan. There were murmurs that barely reached his ears, a sharp tug to his hair and the unmistakable sound of Pike releasing a throaty moan moments before he went tellingly still and McCoy felt the strong pulse of his orgasm tear through him. He writhed back into the last spurts of Pike’s cock inside him, back arching luxuriously as hands roamed aimlessly over his body and moaning his satisfaction around the thick weight of Jim throbbing tellingly against his tongue, encouraging McCoy to focus what was left of his mind on pushing Jim over the edge by suckling hard at the head and stroking him rapidly from the base with spit-soaked fingers. The fingers in his hair tightened and tugged at him, his hips jumped reflexively against the pressure of McCoy’s hand as Jim cried out and spilled over his tongue. He savoured the lively taste of him as he swallowed, gently milking the last weak drops of his release and humming as he felt Pike’s softening cock throb inside him in equal enjoyment of Jim’s undoing.

Exhaustion didn’t allow him to enjoy the fullness of holding both his lovers inside him for as long as he might have wanted. McCoy reluctantly drew away from Jim as over-sensitized whimpers met his prolonged nuzzling of his softening flesh, while Pike slipped from him with a low groan and dropped alongside Jim on the bed. He flung a heavy arm around McCoy’s shoulders as he rolled to the side of Jim’s thigh, lightly encircling them both. The glancing sensation of his pulse pounding quick through his wrist made McCoy crane his head upward to scrutinize Pike’s sweating body and trembling limbs.

‘Chris…?’ he murmured. He reached for his lover’s wrist, silently checking his pulse until Pike groaned and snatched his arm away with a pointed glare. 

‘Don’t you start, Doctor,’ he warned, his voice sex-worn and rough. ‘I’m fine,’ he added softly as his eyes slipped closed and his fingers caressed McCoy’s frowning lips before dropping back to Jim’s hip. ‘Certainly no more worn out than the pair of you.’

‘No kidding.’ Jim shifted lazily against McCoy’s body as he slid further down the bed, closer to his Chris. ‘So he’s like that with you too?’

Pike chuckled tiredly. ‘Only gets worse,’ he said, tilting his head upward as Jim leaned in for a kiss, tender with a messily post-coital ease that stole McCoy’s breath as he stared from his tangled place among their sprawling legs. He parted his aching lips, uncertain whether to interrupt this intimate pause or enjoy the view but Pike reached for him while he hesitated, pulling away from Jim’s beautiful mouth to beckon him with a look that moved him far more effectively than the hand tugging at his arm. Both men shifted to make space for him, Jim fitting his smooth limbs around his body from behind as Pike drew him up against his chest, patiently worshipping his swollen mouth with brief kisses and gentle nips until McCoy parted for the deeper explorations of his tongue slipping inside. He moaned into Pike’s mouth, writhing weakly beneath the equally slow drift of Jim’s fingertips along his thigh, over his belly.

‘He tastes good on you,’ Pike murmured, lips still brushing his. McCoy stifled a spark of arousal with a weak moan, eyes squeezing shut.

‘You two are gonna be the death of me,’ he complained, half-heartedly at best. Sure enough, the closer slide of arms and legs didn’t seem the least bit discouraged and felt only safe, even simple, unbelievably good. Still, worry itched beneath the sweat drying on his skin and furrowed his brow as he pressed his face into the scent of Pike’s shoulder.

‘So what happens now?’ he mumbled. 

‘You mean after we clean ourselves up?’ Pike asked lightly. ‘Dinner might be an idea.’

‘Mm, hope this place has room service,’ Jim added, nuzzling casually into the back of his neck, pressing a kiss to a stinging patch of skin that must have been a bite. ‘I’m in no rush to get dressed.’

‘You never are, you shameless exhibitionist,’ he grumbled beneath his breath, that seed of worry only growing at their combined indifference. ‘And you know that’s not what I meant.’

‘I know, beautiful.’ A kiss brushed the top of his head, another graced the nape of his neck, so different but perfectly in sync. ‘But nothing needs to happen just yet… so long as you’ll have us, we’re here. Will that do?’

Knowing his Chris was right did little to ease the knot of anxiety lurking in his chest, but he offered a mute nod and blindly reached for Jim’s hand on his hip. Lingering in this was sweeter, and far less terrifying than thoughts of unsigned enlistment papers and the regrets that went with either choice. 

‘And if we really must think past food and sleep…’ Pike added slowly. ‘James, do you like horses?’

‘What?’ Jim’s lips pulled away from his skin, his voice clearly confused but McCoy understood immediately. He lifted his head as well, raised an intrigued eyebrow at the bright glint in Pike’s eye.

‘Mojave?’ 

‘Why not?’ Pike shrugged. ‘Repairs won’t be done for weeks, and even Starfleet’s fed up with debriefing the two of you. And technically,’ he added dryly, ‘I’m not meant to be working at all.’

Gratitude swept through McCoy at the thought, propelled by fond memories of past visits to Pike’s childhood ranch, of his Tara waiting for him in the stable and unspoiled desert rides and homecooked meals and… 

He bit his lip anxiously, feeling a mortified heat crawling up his neck as he thought on far less wholesome activities, things that had already drawn Jim’s disapproval once.

‘I don’t really know how to ride horses,’ Jim admitted uncertainly, startling McCoy out of his reluctance to agree.

‘Weren’t you raised on a farm?’ he asked incredulously.

‘Not that kind of farm.’ There was a grudging, almost shameful note in Jim’s muttered reply that made him regret having asked. Pike responded far better, sliding a hand over McCoy’s shoulder to reassure him with a touch beyond his seeing.

‘Guess we’ll just have to teach you,’ he said kindly. ‘Don’t worry, son, after accelerated command track at the Academy, it’ll be nothing to you.’

Eased by Pike’s instinctive reassurance, McCoy let his eyes drift shut again as talk of horses murmured easily over him. There would be time enough to worry about what else Jim might learn at Mojave, or everything else that came after. For now, being trapped between two reckless men felt like the most peaceful place he had ever known.


End file.
